This also applies to many other things, such as cars. But perhaps the timeline is shifted.
But if we go earlier a bit, it was common for people to know much more about house construction, electric work, flooring, making furniture etc. IKEA emulates some of this, but it's really a different thing to live around things you truly understand, you participated in builting your house, you know how and why everything is in it, you can fix your car, you can make produce in your garden, you eat your chickens' eggs, which you can turn into baked chicken, the whole process from hatching to hen to plate is managed by you etc.
People are having less and less control and understanding of their lives. It's all "coming from somewhere" and wrapped in abstractions and euphemisms. You no longer buy things, just rent, etc. It really changes the mentality to a more child-like thinking, at the mercy of some opaque system. With AI we will get the final blow. No skills, no intellectual muscle, just as people don't even remember the and driving directions to even places they regularly visit, because GPS gives instructions so it's just not memorized. It will be the same but for everything.
It's why I became an electrician, and specialised in telecoms. I realised in my 20's that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life typing on a keyboard, and telecoms is the right kind of combination of geekery and practical work. Plus I know all the fundamental electrician stuff. I highly recommend this career path if you feel the same way. My last job was in robotics where my combined skillset of being a Linux-focused computer+networking geek and having electrical skills made me pretty unique. Lately my career has taken a bizarre turn where I do AV, networking and electrical work, plus... swimming pool maintenance. Life, uh, finds a way.
Anyways, apart from knowing how a car works on a theoretical level, I have no idea how to fix mine, and getting fucked at the dealership is a part of my life I have begrudgingly accepted.
But if we go earlier a bit, it was common for people to know much more about house construction, electric work, flooring, making furniture etc. IKEA emulates some of this, but it's really a different thing to live around things you truly understand, you participated in builting your house, you know how and why everything is in it, you can fix your car, you can make produce in your garden, you eat your chickens' eggs, which you can turn into baked chicken, the whole process from hatching to hen to plate is managed by you etc.
People are having less and less control and understanding of their lives. It's all "coming from somewhere" and wrapped in abstractions and euphemisms. You no longer buy things, just rent, etc. It really changes the mentality to a more child-like thinking, at the mercy of some opaque system. With AI we will get the final blow. No skills, no intellectual muscle, just as people don't even remember the and driving directions to even places they regularly visit, because GPS gives instructions so it's just not memorized. It will be the same but for everything.